MASHONALAND 47 



was wholly out of his element selling tins of bully 

 beef behind the counters of a trading station. 

 Here, too, we met a sallow-faced white man 

 who had come down from the far interior, and 

 a rather unprepossessing-looking " prospector." 

 The traveller had been very ill, and had little to 

 say for himself, but the prospector gentleman kept 

 up a running fire of babble. Said he to B., 

 " 'Ullo, old stiff ! I'm sure I've met you before. 

 Down in the south, I reckon." Said B. in 

 his quiet way, " Highly probable. I was once 

 Governor of the Pretoria gaol." The digger 

 lapsed into a pleasing silence after that. 



As Molo, the leading donkey, was unfit for 

 duty, we visited the Native Commissioner's office 

 and prayed him to secure us four porters. We 

 lunched with B., and, to our great delight, four 

 stalwart M'Tokos arrived early in the afternoon. 

 Their leader and spokesman was a regular old 

 Uncle-Tom-looking sort of native, not without 

 certain markedly simian characteristics about his 

 features and limbs. He was a cheerful, willing 

 old savage, full of anecdote and jest. L. and I 

 named him the " Bo'sun," and we said " good- 

 bye " to him with keen regret a week or two 

 later. These M'Tokos agreed to carry loads for 

 us to the Portuguese border, so in the afternoon 

 we set off — L. and I, seven natives, and three 

 donkeys. Great, precipitous granite cliffs towered 

 high all round us, and at night we camped in a 

 native village, where a number of Portuguese 

 boys, going through to Salisbury, were resting. 

 The " Bo'sun " very cleverly bound up the 

 stock of my broken shot-gun with wire, and 

 the next morning I shot a brace of guinea- 

 fowl in some old native gardens. Julius, the 

 resourceful, cooked them in admirable style. 



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